AI tools are reshaping hospital-at-home for both clinicians and patients

When a patient is admitted to a hospital bed these days, that bed might be in their living room. Hospital-at-home programs, once a niche experiment in acute care delivery, are becoming a mainstream option for U.S. health systems under pressure to lower costs, free up inpatient beds, and improve the patient experience. As of April 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) had approved more than 320 hospitals in 37 states to provide acute care at home. Analysts estimate that by 2025, as much as $265 billion in Medicare services could move to home-based settings.

Now, artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to accelerate that transformation. In recent weeks, two announcements, hellocare.ai’s integration with Epic’s MyChart Bedside TV and Allina Health’s expansion of its partnership with AI documentation platform Evidently, have shown how quickly AI tools are becoming embedded in the day-to-day operations of these programs.

Bringing the smart hospital room home

The hellocare.ai platform already offers virtual nursing, telehealth, remote observation, and continuous patient monitoring. On July 21, the company announced that it had integrated Epic MyChart Bedside TV directly into its system, effectively turning a patient’s home television into a connected care hub. From their TV, patients can review test results, message their care team, receive medication reminders, and access tailored educational videos without juggling devices or logins. The setup runs natively on hellocare.ai’s hardware, eliminating the need for additional equipment.

It’s more than a convenience feature. The integration can proactively deliver personalized content based on a patient’s clinical profile, hinting at a future where AI systems anticipate needs rather than simply respond to them. The move also reflects a larger trend: algorithms taking on a more active role in patient engagement, from education to adherence support.

Reducing administrative work for clinicians with AI from Evidently

While hellocare.ai focuses on patient-facing technology, Evidently targets one of clinicians’ biggest pain points: documentation. On July 9, Allina Health announced it would expand its use of Evidently’s AI platform across all care models, including home health, maternal and newborn care, palliative services, and Hospital-at-Home.

Evidently’s platform acts as an AI co-pilot for clinicians. It provides real-time chart summaries, highlights key patient details, enables built-in chat for care coordination, streamlines note-taking, and supports insurance appeals. The interface is optimized for mobile, and it is especially valuable for hospital-at-home providers, who often work in locations where they don’t have access to the full support structure of a hospital.

“Our goal is to help providers spend less time in the EHR and more time with the patient,” said David Ingham, Allina’s chief digital and information officer. For Hospital-at-Home teams, those minutes matter. Reducing administrative overhead can directly translate into seeing more patients without compromising quality.

A glimpse of the next stage of AI in hospital-at-home

Taken together, these moves illustrate how AI is advancing two pillars of hospital-at-home success: high-touch patient engagement and efficient clinical workflows. They also foreshadow a near future in which more “agentic” systems, capable of observing, interpreting, and initiating actions without human prompts, begin managing larger slices of the care process.

The opportunity is significant. More than 60 acute conditions are now eligible for home-based care, and research from Mass General Brigham has linked the model to lower mortality, fewer readmissions, and less use of skilled nursing facilities. For health systems facing staff shortages and rising inpatient demand, AI could be the key to scaling these programs while maintaining, or improving, outcomes.

“We’re excited to bring Epic MyChart Bedside TV engagement to more hospitals, enabling scalable and patient-centered care,” said Labinot Bytyqi, CEO of hellocare.ai. If the early results hold, the combination of personalized engagement and streamlined workflows could help make Hospital-at-Home not just an alternative to inpatient care, but a standard part of the acute care landscape.